Word: civiletti
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...only major problem confronted by Griffin Bell last week: for seven weeks the Senate Judiciary Committee delayed acting on the confirmation of Benjamin Civiletti, 42, as Deputy Attorney General. Finally Bell came before the committee. "You may be aiming at me or the President," he drawled in a booming voice. But in any case, he said, the stalling has "hurt the Department of Justice, which is a valuable institution...
Bell was particularly peeved with Republican Chief Inquisitor Malcolm Wallop, 45. During 17 days of hearings, the freshman Senator and Wyoming rancher has asked Civiletti and five other witnesses hundreds of questions in a search for evidence of willful wrongdoing in the Administration's firing last January of Republican David Marston as U.S. Attorney for eastern Pennsylvania. Jimmy Carter ordered Marston's dismissal after a request by Pennsylvania Congressman Joshua Eilberg, who later turned out to be under investigation in a case involving financial irregularities in the construction of a Philadelphia hospital...
...they fired Marston. Said Bell: "I did not know it, and I'm satisfied the President did not know it. In fact, there was not an investigation on Nov. 5 when Eilberg called the President." The Attorney General maintained that the earliest date on which either he or Civiletti could have known of the Eilberg investigation was Dec. 19, when the Justice Department received testimony from an informant implicating Eilberg in the hospital scandal...
...subdued Wallop conceded that he questioned only Civiletti's administrative abilities, not his competence as a lawyer. So far as those abilities were concerned, said the Attorney General, "I have been impressed...
...seemed, were most of the committee members. At week's end they voted 10 to 2 to recommend that the Senate confirm Civiletti when it takes up his nomination this week...